The present invention relates generally to computer storage systems, and more specifically, to impact-based migration scheduling in a computer storage system.
In a computer storage system (for example, a data center), volumes of data are stored across a plurality of physical computer storage devices. Periodically, storage migration, i.e., moving data from one physical storage device (or set of devices) to another physical storage device (or set of devices), may be necessary to lower costs and/or increase performance. For example, in a computer storage system that includes various tiers of physical storage devices, each data volume may be evaluated periodically to compare the tier of its current physical storage location with the data volume's input/output (I/O) characteristics. If the tier of the current physical device is a poor match for the data volume, migration to a different physical device in another tier may be recommended for the data volume. For example, if a data volume is accessed frequently but the underlying storage device is a lower tier device with moderate (not high) performance, an uptiering migration may be recommended to move the data volume to a higher tier device with better performance.